


Some Things In Here Don't React Well To Bullets

by DreadnoughtsAtDawn



Category: Destiny (Video Games), She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Gen, Gun Violence, Lots of Horde Clones Were Hurt During Production, My First AO3 Post, Self-Indulgent, Set During S5: E5 Save The Cat, Swearing, Why Did I Write This?, slight blood and gore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:20:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24973714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreadnoughtsAtDawn/pseuds/DreadnoughtsAtDawn
Summary: “You think they have a ship?” Setii glanced at Kalish before being thrown off balance as a massive grey and purple object smashed through the wall and lowered a ramp. “Nevermind, apparently that was a stupid question.”Setii holstered her pistol and readjusted the rifle strap around her neck as she ran towards their potential ride. She was stopped dead in her tracks by the arrival of a golden armoured, eight foot tall warrior brandishing a glowing sword in one hand and what appeared to be an unconscious cat person slung over her other shoulder.The Merriam-Webster dictionary describes a lost cause as something that is certain to fail. The Princess alliance has never read this definition and the guardians of the tower stand in open defiance of it. How would She-ra's universe change if a titan from Destiny's universe was suddenly thrust into it
Relationships: Ghost & Guardian (Destiny)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	Some Things In Here Don't React Well To Bullets

**Author's Note:**

> If you've found this fic, congratulations! As far as I can tell this is the first SPOP/Destiny crossover fic on all of AO3 and it owes its existence to a "the last game you played is getting a crossover with the last show you watched" post which my brain wouldn't let me let go of. I'll update the tags as this thing unfolds.

Horde Prime was not someone who could be considered a gambler, not that there was anyone in his empire who would do so with him but that suited him just fine. Horde Prime didn’t gamble because Horde Prime could never lose. This is how he knew Adora would come for his new little sister, there were no odds to bet on. All he had to do was wait patiently and all the parts of his faithful machine would serve their purpose. 

So it was with great interest and more than a little surprise that he looked over a security alert with a mysterious energy signature that, despite its unknown origins, was similar in wavelength to a very old classification of power and unmistakably a portal. A portal which had deposited two entities onto his ship and then vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. The passengers his flagship had rather unceremoniously picked up were, per the scans he was receiving, inorganic in physical form but there was something about them that led him to believe that there was more to it than simple war bots. 

A set of dice had been cast and though he never gambled this roll was somewhat beyond his control. Still, Horde Prime found himself becoming even more excited than he had been previously. The chance to be surprised was a rare commodity to him but even so there were two things that were readily apparent; one: the odds that this event had anything to do with the Etherians was indescribably small even if his estimates of their speed were misinformed and two: the intruders surely hadn’t meant to portal themselves in front of the doors to his kitchen.

“How interesting, I do believe we have an unexpected guest aboard.” He turned to two of his brothers attending him while he recharged on his throne. “Send my greetings to our second party, I shall be with them as soon as our unfortunately tardy Princess of Power arrives.”

He watched the two clones as they left the throne room, as soon as the doors closed again his attention was pulled to the sensors displayed on the screens behind him and the ancient Etherian ship that had just appeared on the short-range sensors

“Ah and so the guest of honour has arrived just as we were speaking about her, how wonderful.” Horde prime smiled at his monitors with content as he watched external camera displays of the relic being pulled into the nearest hanger bay.

Elsewhere on the massive ship, a very lost ghost and a very disoriented titan attempted to get their bearings.

“Ugh, god I hate Hive portals.” The exo crouched just short of where her ghost hovered and put a hand to her abdomen. “If I had a stomach i'd be emptying it right now.”

“Setii?” The small ghost moved closer to her and spoke up. “I think we have a problem.”

“Kalish, listen I’m not done feeling sorry for my internals just tell me what the problem is.”

“The portal is gone”

“Ah. Right. Good.” Setii stood, her eyes flashed red for a second or two, then she stretched her back and unslung the rifle on her shoulder. “Means we’re gonna get shot at. Might as well go try to find out who’s going to be doing that.”

The two accidental trespassers took in horde prime’s pristine white and green ship as they wandered aimlessly down a hallway. Setii made note of her surroundings while restlessly checking the quick release on her weapons and reloading clips and belts as Kalish silently made it their goal to take scans of everything within range.

“I’d feel a lot less freaked out by this place if it didn’t look like a hospital designed by someone who had a hallway fetish,” Setii shivered and clutched the rifle a little tighter. “I mean honestly it looks like these things just go on forever.”

“Would you like it better if some Hive were to pop out and start shooting at you?”

“Honestly yeah, that and I’d like to talk to whoever’s in charge about paying the damn lighting bills.”

“I will see what I can do about getting you that near-death experience but i cannot make you any promises on the inconsistent lighting.”

“I knew I kept you around for something.”

Kalish floated a few metres further ahead of her towards what appeared to be an open catwalk overlooking a massive Chamber in the middle of the structure. As Setii approached the edge of the walkway she took in the enormous room with a throne and a greenish, fan-shaped display screen on a white platform in the center of it. The seat was occupied by a sleek-looking, green ,grey and white clad being who appeared to be hooked into the chair by a myriad of cables and tubes. The throne was facing towards his two attendants who had their backs to the rather unnerved duo. He seemed, to the titan, to be the one to talk to about returning to her and Kalish to their part of the universe, provided he didn’t shoot at them first.

“We are not in Kansas anymore Toto,” Kalish said while doing their very best to look and sound unnerved.

“At least we have an idea of who to talk to about paying the hydro bill,” she was thankful for the heavy plate armour of her helmet to hide her unease and the split second flash of red in her eyes. Setii began pacing a few steps to the left and right of where Kalish hovered, “is it just me or does it seem like the Master Control Program down there is watching us?”

“Unfortunately it is not, I feel it too.”

The pair stared at the individual in question for another minute before a door at the end of the terrace opened to reveal a blonde woman wearing a red jacket whose presence filled the chamber with an almost palpable tension. She marched towards the throne with all the personality of an angry Kell. Their attention was pulled away from the platform below by the arrival of a group of five guards who could now clearly be identified as clones rather than uniformed individuals. As they approached Setii flipped off the safety but eased her grip on the rifle and lifted her finger from the trigger.

“His eminence Horde Prime welcomes you to his most illustrious flagship and extends a hand of friendship,” the lead clone spoke with smooth but exaggerated gestures. “Though his eminence considers it rude to sneak into another’s home we are glad to have you as a guest.”

The titan and ghost looked at each other before Setii spoke up.

“Alright well thank you for not shooting at us yet,” With how she was speaking and shifting her weight Kalish was sure that she really would have preferred that. “In my defence I really have never been stealthy at any point in my life so any sneaking was purely by accident.”

“All is forgiven then, honoured guest,” the clone’s smile was too wide to be genuine but his tone so far was keeping the two before him placated. “The most exalted Horde Prime simply has a few questions to ask you.”

The clone looked at Setii expectantly as an oppressive silence fell over the small gathering. It was shattered a moment later by the echoing laughter of Horde Prime, now disconnected from his chair and standing before the blonde woman, which pulled the titan and ghost’s gaze away from their greeters towards the throne platform. Once he stopped the faint sound of limbs cracking and dislocating filled Setii’s ears, she turned back just in time to see white pupils roll out of the skull of the clone she had been talking with and lock onto her own as if this now seemingly possessed clone could see through her heavy faceplate and was staring into her own neon green eyes. A red flash momentarily filled her vision. When the clone spoke again the voice that escaped his mouth was not the same he had used before, this one felt full of veiled threats, malice and an almost otherworldly echo.

“I must admit that your arrival is most unexpected, a surprise to be sure, but I am not one to enjoy being left guessing about anything,” the controlled clone clasped his hands together and looked between the two before him, smiling. “Please do not think me rude for asking but, who are you and why are you here?”

“My name is Kalish and this is my guardian, Setii. I am afraid there’s been some kind of mistake, we really did not expect that portal to take us here.”

“Ah, I believe I understand.”

“Wonderful! So if you would be kind enough to show us the door-”

“You do not look to be from Etheria like my other guests and your design is not otherwise familiar to me,” Horde prime focused his attention to Setii. “Tell me, bot, who are your masters and why do they send only you to my ship.”

“Ok, look, I don- did you just call me a bot?” Kalish quietly swore to themselves as she continued, taking a step forward and thoroughly insulted by the assumption. “Do I look like a goddamn scrap frame to you?”

“Apologies, I seem to have tread-”

“Listen here messiah-complex I ain’t a repaint of some Vex floor sweeper!”

“Setii, please,” her ghost interjected

“You stay outta this one Kay, I am an exo and I have no fucking masters. We’ve already told you how we got her and I’m about done w-” her sentence was cut short by a radio jamming wave that tore through her sensors and forced her to her knees. Kalish simply shuddered and digitized without a sound.

“How very intriguing, did you know who's communications you were listening to or were you simply tuned to an open frequency hoping to find something?” Prime’s host mused leaning down to where the titan knelt holding her head. “That pulse was meant for a different group of intruders, they are being handled as we speak.”

He reached out to hold the chin of her faceplates between his thumb and forefinger as he inspected it.

“While they certainly represent a more pressing concern to me at the moment I shall so very much enjoy taking my time pulling you apart to understand your working and discovering where you came from,” white, clawed hands suddenly grabbed the sides of her helmet and wrenched it from her head. The proxy leaned back on his haunches as he scrutinized the angular, monochromatic plating. “Who knows I may even incorporate some of your designs into my next generation of bots.”

The Prime host glanced at the long rifle lying near his captive, still collapsed on the floor in front of him. The proxy stood and looked over the edge of the catwalk to where Adora and Catra were fighting. Although 'fighting' may have been the wrong word for what was happening on the platform he mused to himself. Prime had not expected so much excitement today but he was certain that all of these newly acquired ‘assets’ would be firmly in his clutches or on a dissection table shortly. With smug satisfaction he turned towards his brothers.

“I do so hope that your homeworld proves to be as interesting as you when I find and conquer it.” The clone walked past Prime’s soon-to-be test subject. “Take her to the lab, I will see to her autopsy myself.”

“Fuck. You.” Coughed the titan.

The clone hosting Prime’s consciousness had just enough time to hear the rifle’s bolt lock into place before four large-caliber rounds slammed into the four surprised looking clone’s chests flanking him. The round that put his lights out took most of his head with it leaving only a disoriented titan still kneeling on the ground and her sniper rifle’s barrel smoking lightly. 

Green blood began to pool around their corpses. Her eyes became the source of a series of panicked flashes between red and green as she forced the deceleration of her internal ventilation. Setii slowly stood, discarding the spent clip and chambering a fresh one as the static and ringing from the jam finally began to clear from her system. Kalish reappeared in front of her and floated towards her face.

“Are you okay?” She walked to where her helmet lay just out of reach of the clone.

“I will be when we’re off this thing,” her voice shook but her gaze steeled as she picked it up off the floor and put it back on. The pair’s attention was grabbed by the explosion from the fan-shaped display screen by the throne as the entire ship shook violently. “That definitely wasn’t us.”

“It most certainly was not, time to go?”

“Something tells me it's been time to go for a while now.”

“Right, let us be going then.” 

They raced back into the halls of the massive ship just as the blonde woman in the red jacket leapt from the burning platform.

The structure was just as maze-like as it had been before but now with at least some of it mapped and considerably more of its layout extrapolated from scans, they ran, going in the opposite direction of the main chamber. Setii only stopped long enough to drop any clones or security bots she saw along the way, these temporary pauses also gave her ghost a chance to get their bearings and attempt to continue plotting the best course forward. The two knew without speaking that standing their ground and fighting it out was probably not an option as they only had so many rounds to use against an enemy that had an unknown number of units at his disposal and with each group that fell to the titan’s rifle it was becoming increasingly clear that that number was exceptionally high. 

It didn't take long for her rifle to run dry, forcing her to switch to her sidearm in order to continue on and to preserve ammo for the heavy machine gun she wanted to keep in reserve. With every skirmish ending with a flash of red in her eyes, fewer rounds in stock and an affirming nod from her ghost as they appeared briefly before vanishing again they moved along quickly and methodically. 

She hadn’t forgotten about the sword strapped to her back beside her machine gun, but as good a duelist as she was, Setii wasn’t about to give away the advantages ranged combat afforded her just yet.

She slid around a corner, laser bolts flying past her as she returned fire with the last clip of her pistol, she laid optics on a small group further down the hall being surrounded by Prime’s forces. The pink and purple uniformed trio looked to have captured a clone and seemed to be putting up a reasonable, if failing, resistance to the oncoming horde with arrows and well placed punches and most confusingly… hair?

“You think they have a ship?” Setii glanced at Kalish before being thrown off balance as a massive grey and purple object smashed through the wall and lowered a ramp. “Nevermind, apparently that was a stupid question.”

Setii holstered her pistol and readjusted the rifle strap around her neck as she ran towards their potential ride. She was stopped dead in her tracks by the arrival of a golden armoured, eight foot tall warrior brandishing a glowing sword in one hand and what appeared to be an unconscious cat person slung over her other shoulder. The warrior walked towards the extended boarding ramp and passed her unconscious cargo off to the three waiting to board as she turned to face the small army of clones who had begun to crawl over the small wall of debris. 

Setii cautiously resumed moving towards the ship while the warrior effortlessly cut apart her assailants. She was vaguely aware of the voice of her ghost telling her that this golden champion may not be as friendly as the two may have sorely needed her to be but she was only stopped again when the warrior turned and, noticing the white and grey armoured titan, fixed her with a glare so laced with ice and rage she felt the need to run a diagnostics check with a flash of red light in her eyes to make sure her hydraulics hadn’t actually frozen over. The golden warrior entered her ship without a word to the frozen guardian, still several dozen feet from the ramp, a moment later the ramp retracted and the ship lifted up, tore through more of the destroyed hall and blasted through the ship until it breached the outside of the hull, exposing it to the vacuum of space. 

Though she hadn’t realized she had almost completely unsheathed her sword while she had been staring down the warrior, Setii was glad for the precious few extra seconds it had given her to fully release it from its scabbard and, grabbing Kalish in one hand, forced the black blade into the floor as she was pulled towards the breach. The ghost and their guardian yelled to each other over the roar of the escaping atmosphere and klaxon alarms.

“There's not much I wouldn't do to have our dropship right about now!”

“On the bright side, your lack of organic lungs makes that hull breach far less dangerous!”

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re a regular bloody comedian?”

The pull of the vacuum subsided as various blast doors and emergency seals activated throughout the shuttle sized tunnel bored through the colossal space station. Setii stood, released her grip on her ghost and ripped her sword from where she had embedded it in the floor.

“So.”

“So we are stuck here unless we can jack a ship from… whatever the hell his name was.”

“Right. He’s gotta have a hanger on this scrap heap somewhere, how long would it take you to find it?”

If Kalish could have given a mischievous smile he would have. 

“Get me a terminal and five minutes.”

Setii nodded to her ghost and turned away from the wrecked corridor as a fresh round of laser bolts ripped through the air causing her to flinch and duck away.

“I’ll be honest, I forgot they were there for a minute,” she swapped her empty sniper rifle into the clip on her back, beside her sword, for her machine gun and let off half a belt at the two dozen clones and sentries firing at her over the torn metal plates and rubble as she took off down the halls in search of an access point to Prime’s network.

As it turned out finding the terminal was the easy part, the hard part was keeping Prime’s forces off their backs long enough to pull the intel that they needed from his servers. Setii was barring off one end of the hall with hard light barriers while spraying down the other end with her machine gun and swapping directions every few minutes as Kalish attempted to decipher the excessively complex internal systems of Horde Prime’s network. 

She had been reluctant to use her light given abilities upon first arriving at a place that was so far removed from the Traveller primarily due to worry that she might not be able to access them at all but partly also due to the desire to not reveal too much of her hand to a now-enemy she knew next to nothing about. The realization that the time for such restraint had ended, came with the last belt she had to feed into the machine gun recoiling in time with the pulse of coolant through her artificial veins. Kalish gave her nothing more than a nod of completion as they pulled away from the terminal before the pair took off in the direction of a secondary hangar bay filled with fightercraft as Setii emptied the last few rounds she had into a squad of approaching clones. They paused at a junction surrounded by the corpses of the squad she had just decimated so Setii could take stock of their situation.

“You wouldn't happen to have any reserve ammo left in the bank would you?”

“No I do not. I gave the last of our reserves to you.”

“Fantastic. What about making more?”

“I cannot synthesize any more at this time and I doubt I will be able to until we find an adequate source of materials and a place not overrun with hostiles.”

“Well alright then I guess you can take the empties from me,” she said as Kalish digitized her firearms and she once again freed her sword from the scabbard on her back. She looked in the direction of their targeted hanger, down the hall where a firing line of clones was forming up. “Looks like we’re gonna make Shaxx proud.”

“The old fashioned way?” She rolled her shoulders and her neck joints.

“The old fashioned way,” electricity surged through her hydraulics and cloaked her body in blue sparks as she charged down the hall towards a firing line of Prime look-alikes, the laser bolts that seared into the heavy plating that covered her body did little to slow her.

Setii slammed shoulder-first into the closing ranks blocking her path with all the force of a runaway freight train, vaporising the clone she had crashed into, electrocuting those nearest to her target and throwing the scorched survivors clear of the impact site. But she did not stop. In the proudest held traditions of the titans who trained her back in the tower she charged on. The matte black blade of her sword ran green with the blood that filled the arteries of the opposing clones and her armour was stained with the internal fluids of the bots that attempted to arrest her desperate rampage directed towards escape. Her vision was filled with red and her thoughts were filled with the stories told to her of the early days of the Last City, Prime’s forces were replaced by waves upon waves of fallen. All that stood in her way were reduced to scrap, viscera and ash.

Horde Prime stood in his secondary command centre enraged at the events unfolding before him. On his own ship. Somehow outside of his control. His miscalculations were so rare as to be statistically nonexistent yet somehow he had underestimated two targets in one day so vastly. Though he knew that all these losses would be easily replaced after it was over he still was so incensed with this defeat. No, not defeat. Horde Prime was never defeated, he had to remind himself that this was merely a minor setback and the mechanical menace currently running rampant through his ship was merely a distraction from the Heart of Etheria awaiting him on the world that was being conquered.  
Memories still tugged at the edges of his memory of Adora and the first ones which he would have to address sooner rather than later but, for now, the most frustrating part of this day was the complete lack of knowledge he had about the strange war machine running amok in his flagship. The power that she displayed was so unlike anything he could ever recall seeing and though it was still clear to him that this ‘Setii-27’ was not quite on the same level as this new, unbound She-Ra, she evidently wielded more than enough power to interfere with his grand plans if left unchecked. 

Thus it was that Prime ordered all currently unengaged forces to muster to form defensive hard points, one of which would be in the hangar the two intruders were making for at their best pace. He exerted his control over the hive-mind of his brothers to taunt the mech as she made her way into the trap he had hastily laid but she was too focused on either the decimation of his forces or her own survival to be distracted by his barbs. This did little to improve Horde Prime’s mood. 

There were several times, during the hour and a half long slog of combat after Adora’s escape that Prime had been certain that he had felled the juggernaut only to have her come tearing around the corner where he had lost sight of her through his clone’s eyes with what seemed like fewer damage to her armour than what he had seen before he had lost eyes on her. Horde Prime wrote it off as imperfections in the vision of his little brothers, Horde Prime was not aware of any other beings in this universe or any other could shrug off the bonds of mortality better than he.

Finally the intruder turned the last corner, tore through the hangar’s blast doors and nearly ran headlong into the small army of clones and bots waiting for her before she clumsily rolled into cover behind an arch with all the grace of a tank dropped from orbit. Regardless of the lack of visuals on their target the small army opened fire on and around their target’s chosen cover. As far as Prime was concerned, this was game over. Every hanger, airlock, teleporter and command center now had a sizable force defending it. The destruction of a server room that had been contained only a few minutes after it had been damaged meant that all that remained was this almost lone aggressor. Horde Prime smiled to himself as he thought of all he might learn from dissecting the automaton’s shattered husk. Now that he had pinned her down in the primary hangar bay, he could converge his forces on it to ensure a victory. After all, Horde Prime didn’t gamble because Horde Prime didn’t lose.

Setii sat with her back to the pillar as she listened to lasers impacting against and around her cover while she weighed her options. She knew she was pinned and could be reasonably certain that every clone and sentry on the flagship was converging on this hanger. She had a hard time limit now. Her cooling systems kicked into overdrive as she stood, summoning all the light she could muster, she turned to face the pillar and walked backwards until her back hit the wall a few feet away from where she had been sitting.  
She closed her eyes for a moment. An old memory of an even older story she’d been told in the tower just after her resurrection made its way to the forefront of her thoughts. It was a battle against impossible odds against an insurmountable force and the heroic actions of a small group that secured victory with a desperate gamble. She had trained under the direction of one of the survivors of the Twilight Gap and as she opened her eyes she swore to herself that she would make it home to tell him all about how she had followed his example. 

Setii sprinted around the pillar as fast as she could work her servos with all the grim determination of a meteor on a collision course. The titan’s frame radiated electricity as dozens of laser bolts rent the air around her or bored holes into her heavy armour, but like before, she did not stop until she was within striking distance to a clone in the centre of the hanger deck. The moment her fist made contact with his face a massive discharge ripped through the surrounding forces. Parts of clones and bots littered the surrounding area as she rushed over the prone and injured survivors to slam shoulder-first into another group. The second discharge created a very similar amount of carnage as the first, by the fourth and final blast most of the hangar’s open floor space had become slick with blood and oil. All that remained of the small army detailed to blocking her were various charred, mutilated parts of Prime’s brothers and his sentries as well as several dozen crippled survivors attempting to gather their bearings. Setii gracelessly tumbled out of her sprint and collapsed in front of a ship, she was leaking various fluids of her own through the absurd number of holes which now marked her white and black armour. With the last of her strength she reached out to slap the small fighter’s hull with the flat side of her battle-stained sword as Her ghost reappeared over her. She didn’t bother to lift her face off the cold metal of the floor to acknowledge them.

“Well I think Shaxx will be very proud of you for that performance,” Kalish said as they began the process of healing their friend's broken frame. “I know I was very impressed.”

A hole in Setii’s neck made a clicking noise which sounded as if she was trying to laugh and she gave a weak thumbs up to them with her empty hand.

“Now that we have gotten my praise out of the way, never do that again. You scared me so much.” Though Kalish was aware that they were unable to glare they felt as if they’d made it fairly clear through intonation that they were very distressed. As the last of the damage was wiped clean by the little ghost’s light Setii spoke up.

“Noted and as always, you are the best field medic ever,” she sat up and slowly pulled herself to standing, using her sword to steady herself and then the hull of the ship for balance, she allowed herself a brief diagnostic run as she quickly surveyed the bay before her. “We’re not gonna have much time before the rest of them get here and we probably have less before those glorified lightning rods are able to regroup.”

“So we should jack this…” the pair turned to properly look at the strange spacecraft resting in front of them. “Are we sure this is a ship?”

“It’s awfully big to just be an upside down slipper.”

“I do not think it has any engine exhaust vents.”

“Well I sincerely doubt we’re gonna get back to Sol by tagging along on board tall, green and spooky’s tub any longer.”

“That is a fair point, I will see what I can do about getting it airborne.”

The moment Kalish vanished into the odd spaceship she slid back down to the floor of the hanger. Setii knew that her ghost was aware of how she was feeling but she determined that a mind over matter response to the harrowing past two hours of almost non-stop combat had more than a little appeal. From where she was sitting the titan had a pretty good view of the carnage she had inflicted on the hanger. She could see several busted up drones slowly crawling their way towards her and surviving clones with a varying degree of injuries who were trying to regroup. While it had felt like an eternity she had only been out of combat for a total of seven minutes before Kalish re-materialized in front of her to tell her that the ship was ready to go. 

Setii had just enough time to acknowledge them before she saw the first wave of reinforcements enter the hangar. They immediately charged towards the soon-to-be-commandeered craft. She scrambled into the cockpit as the engines roared to life. She was Briefly aware of what she could feel was a concerned look thrown her way by her ghost as laser bolts began to impact the hull of the fighter. The controls were slightly alien to her but not so much as to be completely inoperable, she made an educated guess and rammed the stick controls forward. The exhaust hatches flew open and its thrusters roared into action as the craft tore out of the hanger with little grace and lots of scratched paint. A legion of security forces instantly switched over to scrambling whatever functional craft they could to engage the stolen craft before her ghost would be able to deactivate its tracking beacon.

“So I’m pretty sure I'm flying this thing on pure coded adrenaline rather than any actual piloting skill,” Setii struggled to keep the craft steady while her vision flicked between the system displays and the viewscreen with uncertainty. “I really hope you've got more of an idea of what we’re doing with this than I do Kalish.”

“I do not think I have ever seen a system quite like this,” they said as they reappeared within Setii’s field of view to hover by her shoulder. “But I am convinced that I have the navigational systems figured out. I have begun plotting a course to-” 

They were interrupted by Horde Prime’s voice filling the cockpit through the ship’s comms.

"You think you can escape me? In one of my own ships?” he bellowed. “I am Horde Prime! I know all, I see all! You will not escape my wrath!”

“Sorry, no megalomaniacs allowed on this channel.” Kalish cut the transmission before he could continue.

“I’d like to put forward a motion to the committee that he be labeled as officially creepier than Xol.”

“Seconded, motion carried.”

“Good, so where were you taking us again Kay?”

“Right, as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted,” there was a brief pause as the two looked at the radio display as if expecting another intrusion before Kalish continued. “I have now finished plotting us a course to that ‘Etheria’ place that tall, green and spooky had been talking about.”

“As good a place as any to restock I suppose, we probably couldn't have gotten a ride home from sunshine-and-nightmare-fuel anyways.”

“He did not sound like he was willing to forgive us for killing so many of his troops, wrecking his ship and stealing a ship, no.”

The navigational display appeared on the main viewscreen as Setii piloted the ship onto the plotted course. They didn’t know if there was a way to get back to Sol where they were headed but maybe they could do some good along the way.

He stood before a massive display screen in a secondary control room, fists clenched with rage. Against his will, it seemed, he had been forced to gamble. Prime never played with betting odds because everytime he did he lost. His assault on Krytis, the first battle against the First Ones on Penumbara, the second war with the Taejynn empire and now today. All gambles, even if he hadn't known they were at the time. The small blip on the screen that represented his stolen fighter disappeared from the radar. A final report of total casualties from the events of the past few hours rolled across part of the bottom of the screen. Prime growled and glared daggers into the numbers as if his eyes might begin to bore holes through the screen and out the window to the void of space if he stared long enough. Eventually he turned away and stalked out of the room.

The display projected onto the walls of the darkened room after the door closed behind Horde Prime. 317 Units Damaged, 188 Destroyed, Target: Lost.

**Author's Note:**

> I will be continuing what will undoubtedly be a fun little dumpster fire but I can't speak as to when I might actually get around to doing that. I hope at least some of you liked this horrifically self indulgent mess. 
> 
> Also, congrats if you understood some of the references I made.


End file.
